Pepsi One

Pepsi One is essentially an alternative to Diet Pepsi marketed towards men. Marketing types found that 'diet' drinks are considered by many to be an effeminate choice. Pepsi One is positioned as a one-calorie alternative that men can drink under the guise that it tastes better, rather than admitting that they are dieting. The advertising campaign features Tom Green being anything but effeminate.

It's the domestic equivalent to Pepsi Max , which is found in many countries overseas. They serve the same purpose, though the formula used to mix sodas varies from country to country. I've been told by Irish travelers that all of our sodas in the US taste like chlorine. Elsewhere, sodas may be mixed to taste extremely sweet. Pepsi Max is positioned as an 'extreme' (can you handle it?) soda, much like Mountain Dew's positioning here in the US, backlashing from effeminate to point more at macho.

Diet soft drinks are a draw of much ire from individuals who love their regular drinks, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but through unfortunate circumstances - like being diagnosed with diabetes for instance like me - are forced to switch to the artificially sweetened swill containing neurotoxins like aspartame. Ahem, i.e. "Nutrasweet." It has been a cause of much lament for me as I sought out suitable sugar substitutes that didn't have a chance of giving me a brain tumor or, at the very least, not enjoy my dinner as much. I found it in Splenda, or sucralose. Suddenly with the Atkins craze abound, even though I loathe the idea of it for myself, side effects have included many "diet" products to be manufactured with sucralose and marketed as "low carb" (along with absolutely revolting chemicals like polydextrose and malitol which, when eaten in large quantities give you horrible cases of the shits and farts).

I found some solace with Coke's "C2" and Pepsi Edge. Both are sweetened with sucralose and real sugar and/or the hypersweet high fructose corn syrup. (For some bizarre reason Coke, in their infinite wisdom, decided that C2 still needed some of that nasty aspartame thrown in there as well). (I like Splenda a lot and, even though some disagree with me, I find that I cannot tell the difference between that and real sugar.) But there was still that issue of them having real sugar and still not good for me to be drinking. Pepsi One I would still pick up now and again and I did like how, among all other diet colas I'd tried, it did live up to their marketing claim of tasting like regular, even with sweetening it with aspartame. It still had the unpleasant diet after taste, though. I have drank Diet Rite and it was wonderful because it was sweetened entirely with sucralose, or Splenda. But they had many weird flavors and for some reason their diet cola tasted just as nasty as other diet colas. All I really wanted was a diet cola sweetened entirely with Splenda! Was that really too much to ask? How long would I have to wait for such a concept to come to fruition?

Well my wait is finally over! Lo and behold, last Sunday, while at the convenience store, I see Pepsi One in its new mostly-black label, touting a "GREAT NEW TASTE." Could it be?!, I think. I check the ingredients. Sure enough, nasty aspartame is gone, in its place: sucralose!

So now I come to the main point of this write up, to update the ones above, Pepsi One has been reformulated to be sweetened with sucralose only. And I can now scarcely tell a difference between it and regular Pepsi (and best of all: no nasty after taste!!) And, as it always has been with Pepsi One, a major plus - as opposed to Diet Rite - is that it still has caffeine. Well, that's not really a very good thing, but, hey, the stuff keeps me awake. Below is a revised ingredient list:

The difference between the old Nutrition Facts and the new ones is that Pepsi One has less sodium now, 25mg instead of 45. That's good. And no grams of sugar are listed. And of course it still has that one calorie (wouldn't be Pepsi "One" without it now would it?)

OldMiner says: "hate to spoil your dream, but acesulfame potassium is also a sweetener, so it isn't just sucralose you're tasting there."